My tripcode is a#bc.

Your tripcode could be "Strange World Builder#bc".

Or whatever.

You decide.

>bioshock meets cthulhu mythos setting

>>6144697
Thanks. =)

>>6144703
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CB3QO7CT
the PDF. I've still got some stuff to iron out with the setting, but I've got it on the backburner now while I work on this new setting idea. Feel free to download and enjoy.


So the first thing I need to know about this setting, is would an object travelling at a set speed through the depths of space, be able to slow itself down with no external forces ( Such as rocket engines) if caught in a gravity well? Or would it take an inordinate amount of time, a few miles an hour shed every year? What I'm thinking, from my own mental image of the setting, is that I will have the planet come from 'above'. Probably a different, near by galaxy. Comes down, hits our solar system, get's caught by the sun, and begins to orbit. Instead of being 'along' the plane of eclipse, it would be 90 degrees opposite.

Could this happen? Or would the planet merely 'change direction' but keep going out into space again?

it is unlikely. really, reallt unlikely. but it is possible.

orbit would be eliptical. more eliptical if the planet was traveling very fast relative to the speed and direction its new sun was traveling in.

you would have stupidely hot summers and insanely cold winters.

in 40k terms like Fenris. Fenris has this sort of problem and is just on the boundry of habitable. this is the very, very best the inhabitants of such a world (assuming it has inhabitants) could hpe for.

Does the planet have a moon?

I thought this was going to be about a Lost in Space RPG. I was disappointed. :(

I want to be the little boy. :(

Mr world builder, I like you.
that said, lets see what this leads to.

>>6144666
Maybe for your next project you could do something that mixes together Coraline, Kingdom Hearts and Twilight? I think they all have some themes in common and could really add to each other in interesting ways.

National Geographic Channel had something about ejected planets housing life a while back on a show called Alien Earths. I preferred some of the other theories that they had -- planets orbiting pulsars and planets with extreme elliptical orbits, for example. Sadly, because of that, I don't remember much about the ejected ones.

nothing is preventing something with the mass of a planet traveling between solar systems but the forces involved are REALLY more than I took in physics class
You could probably handwave most of it by going lol gravitycontrol but I'm not sure its necessary given how fast solar systems travel relative to each other.
Oh and the different galaxy bit would only be likely if the planet had sat there since from the beginning of time.

Orbital mechanics works out easier if the rogue planet is orbiting something already. Like a small blackhole or something.

Make it a wide WIDE orbit, and juggle the original systems orbits just right and you just might never notice it aside from some slight changes to orbits.

Reminds me of a scifi story i read years ago, earth got caught by a passing black hole or black dwarf or something, the sun kept the moon as a consolation prize. The survivors had to dig up frozen oxygen (like snow) and melt it for air.

I'm more interested in the fungal apocalypse than the water world, myself. Got that one anywhere?

Hm. These are good thoughts guys, and I appreciate it.

The intention of this story is for a fairly hard sci-fi setting. The planet appears, coming from Stellar north, where our telescopes aren't really pointed. Such a small dark object, just sort of... appears. Once it's heated up enough, it's discovered that the planet has a breathable atmosphere, and a suitable size/density for humans. The actual story would be exploring this planet and arranging colonization of humans to the planet.

No moon, although that could be changed. I see one planet possibly being flung free of it's orbit into intersteller space. But a planet -and- it's moon might not work, they'd be flung into two different directions. End up seperating. At least, my reasoning on it. Could be wrong, please correct me if I am.


>>6145289
No.

>>6145354
Looking it up for reference, Thanks!

>>6145381
I'm not looking for the planet to have been thrown into space through artificial means. I haven't determined -what- launched the planet into space. Something did though. I figure that could be part of the reason the planet is of such great interest to humanity.

It's habitable to humans, shows obvious signs of some sort of sentient beings in the past. ( artificial structures, ruins that have basically been frozen in time since the planet was flung free ) Not sure about anything living though.

>>6145447
Sorry, I didn't make a write up on the Fungal apocalypse. I could if you're really that interested. i'll post it later tonight.

>>6145484
I thought that you might like the one with the extreme elliptical orbits, honestly. I'm stealing that for a story I'm working on. The general gist is as follows: A planet that is only within the Goldilocks zone during it's fall and spring months. During the winter, it's frozen solid, too far away from the star to be warmed to a habitable point. During the summer, it's too far in and the oceans boil. The ideas for how people would adapt to survive are interesting...

>>6145495
No pressure, it just seems you know how to build worlds from ground up so I'd like to see it.
>>6145484
>But a planet -and- it's moon might not work, they'd be flung into two different directions. End up seperating.

In fact, it is very possible. It all depends on the numbers. The smaller the moon, and the closer it is to the planet, the better chances of it remaining part of planet's system. I have no solid numbers for you, unfortunately.

>>6145554
That is exactly the type of situation that would be highly ideal for this.

Imagine, this planet appears out of no where. It locks itself into orbit. It's out of the plane of the Eclipse, and has minimal gravitational interaction with the other planets in our system. ( To prevent fucking up orbits and such )

Any missions to the planet would have to be done during the spring/autumn months or possibly the winter months. But the summer? Pulling so close to the sun that the planet's surface starts to boil. It'd be like Mercury. Only issue I have with that would be the loss of any 'ruins' on the planet.

Unless you're in an extremely curved space-time you won't be able to slow an object down in space without external forces.

What you can do is aerobrake in an atmosphere. So your rogue planet can sweep through a gas giant's atmosphere and bleed off enough momentum that it gets captured by the solar gravity well. That assumes it wasn't already a slow-enough moving body to get captured. You could also have deep space collisions between the planet and kuiper belt objects slow it down - this is way more plausible than an aerobraking scheme, because collisions will happen, the problem though is that it'd be hard to have enough collisions to bleed off enough speed. The trip through a gas giant's atmosphere makes for a cooler story, though.

Odds are it would be in an elliptical and eccentric orbit, and it would likely play hell with other planetary orbits in the solar system over geologic time, but that kind of calculation is difficult because orbital systems are highly chaotic so handwavium can apply and as long as you're not doing something like throwing Saturn out of the solar system (a smaller planet like Venus or Mars wouldn't be out of the question - massive orbital shifts were common during planet formation, adding a new massive object could easily eject a smaller massed object out of its original orbit, maybe into a parabolic one that exits the solar system) it'd be plausible enough.

>>6145606
Says who? During the transit to the new star system, everything solidifies. When it locks into its new orbit, stuff melts, right? But a layer of (for lack of a better word) deposit is formed on everything. During the summer, oceans boil, and near the end, a large amount of particles are sent into the air. The previous sediment, without moisture, solidifies. During the fall, everything that was ejected into the atmosphere falls again. While it removes some sediment, more collects. (Think of it as every raindrop has dirt in it.) Everything freezes solid, trapping the ruins under more sediment. In that case, you get surprisingly well-preserved remains that you'd probably only be able to explore during the winter and spring -- during the fall you'd pretty much have planet-wide monsoons, making removing the sediment rather dangerous.

>>6145606
Any missions to the planet would have to be done during the spring/autumn months or possibly the winter months. But the summer? Pulling so close to the sun that the planet's surface starts to boil.
This might not be as easy as it sounds. It would have to pass REALLY close to the sun and have a slow orbit, in the order of decades, in order to "boil the surface", and if the orbit is so excentric then you can kiss the idea of temperate spring/autumn goodbye.
>>6145633
This sounds beyond awesome. I can already imagine an entire planet grazing Jupiter. Wouldn't getting so close as to interact with the giant's atmosphere incur significant volcanic squash (on top of probably epic friction heat)?

Personally I think your best bet is to have the planet orbit another massive dark body. The interplay between that body and the large masses of solar system (Sun and Jupiter) can happen in so many billions of ways that there are guaranteed plausible ways to trap the small planet while the original massive body it used to orbit is ejected from the Solar system at a new trajectory.

Combining the two ideas, bonus points if the said massive body collides with Jupiter in some spectacular before speeding on its way.

Let me try and lay out my concerns and questions for this setting in a logical order. The most pressing first, followed by the less pressing questions.

Question 1 - Is it possible for a planet, travelling at speeds equivalent to our -own- planets orbit around the sun to be caught by the sun as it passes through teh solar system? if I were -any- good at complex maths I could figure out. But I'm absolutely horrible.

Question 2 - What effects would the -extreme- cold of Intersteller space have on a planets atmosphere if that planets atmosphere were similar to our own? My concerns in this area is would the atmosphere condense and freeze then reheat and expand naturally as it got closer to our system?

Question 3 - How would that same intense cold effect ( affect?) a liquid core of the planet? Could the core still be molten with earthquakes and tectonic plates, after spending say... a million years travelling through the void of space? or would the extreme cold and lack of gravitational forces have 'stalled' the Engine?

Question 4 - How much debris is there in intersteller, and even intergalactic space? I realize it's mostly void. But after travelling for a million years, would the planet be riddled with craters similar to our moon? Or would active tectonics have wiped out most of the craters, filling them in with rapidly cooling Mag-ma?

Lastly. Other then Bacteria, what sorts of life could survive on this planet with a frozen atmosphere and such extreme colds before reaching the planet? is it plausible that when reheated, and the watercycle working again, seeds and plants under the ground would sprout again? Or would they most likely be killed because of intersteller radiation and the intense cold?

>>6145633
Oh, god. I love that. The planet passing through the kuiper belt, then cutting through Jupiter, just enough to slow down greatly and cause one -hell- of a show, but not enough really fuck up Jupiter.

>>6145716
Another excellent point. I like that. I'm going to write that down.

>>6145785

You'd have lots of tidal heating probably from Jupiter's gravity. There's be lots of electrical disturbances too from Jupiter's magnetic field. The frictional heating from the atmosphere could be handwaved into just stripping off whatever atmosphere the planet had (from the Sun warming the planet as it got closer). I think the planet's topography could survive relatively intact depending on the kind of speeds we're talking about here. Of course if it's too hot, then combined with the electro-magnetic effects causing massive lightning arcs across and near the planet's surface you can get all kinds of exotic materials to form (I'm remembering some book where Mars's orbital elevator broke, wrapped around the planet, and produced all sorts of hard to make Carbon compounds that people set about mining).

The tidal heating could warm the interior of the planet up and cause the release of any gases in the interior of the world, giving it a new atmosphere after the Jupiter collision. Even if there's no outright volcanic activity, there could still be massive outgassing of underground water pockets, frozen gasses (oxygen/methane/whatever) trapped under debris from impacts with other 'rogue' planets in deep space, etc.

In fact if you want to have ruins, that'd be a pretty good way to have them survive an encounter with Jupiter and be visible for explorers: They were covered with five billion years of asteroid junk the planet had run into in deep space or while passing through other solar systems. Thus they survive somewhat intact while the overlying material gets burned away by the gas giant, and the planet's original atmosphere gets liberated post-collision by the leftover heat from that crash.

>>6145785
Having such a slow orbit would be an issue, I agree. But it might have to occur. A faster more 'normal' orbit would more then likely not be able to be caught by the sun. The slower planet would be better. buuuut. I think I might have to do a little 'winking' at this point to make the setting more plausible while keeping a touch of realism.

In regards to your other point...

Dark star passes through solar system. Why the sun was kicked loose? I don't know. Possibly two galaxies colliding. Sun and Planet orbit around each other. The sun cold enough that the planet can't receive heat and can't support life. Both travel through interstellar space and end up entering our solar system. Slicing through like a knife, the dark body passes near jupiter, and like a rock held by a string the planet swings around, slicing through jupiter. Between Jupiters mass and the density of it's atmosphere, the smaller planet is kicked to the side, jarring it just enough to launch it towards the sun, breaking it free of the dark star. The Dark star continues to slice through our solar system, passing no where near any other planets as it goes through our system and disapears into the depths of space.

The new planet speeds along on an orbit that's fairly tight, swinging around the sun close on one end of it's orbit, then launched out in an ovoid fashion into space. But -not- along the same line as our planets. Sort of like...two ovals placed 90 degrees apart and with the one at a slight angle.

How does that work? Any "GR YOU!"?

>>6145953
The book you're remembering is the Red Mars/Blue Mars/Green mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson. Has an excellent set in the book explaining what happens when a Space Elevator loses it's orbit and crushes down on the planet.

Anyways.

Yes. The planets got a fairly thick layer of dust covering the planet's ruins. Asteroid hits planet. Dust and debris fly into the air. Settles down around the ruin covering them, making them seem 'natural'.

Then wham. That debris and dust is burned away, revealing crisp, clean, and damn near perfect ruins. It'd be beautiful.

FEELS GOOD MANG.

>>6145798
2. Atmosphere gets frozen. Its expansion might depend of the parameters of re-entry. Also I seem to remember a working magnetosphere is a prerequisite for keeping atmosphere in place. Which brings us to...

3. The "engine" of Earth depends, I think, in great part on decaying radioactives, but I think gravitational influences of Sun and moon are also important. Also, even assuming decaying radioactives are the main factor, I was under the impression that rotation of a planet is connected with its revolution. Without another body to exert gravitational influence, I think it the friction between the various layers of the core and the surface would slow down the rotation of the planet, perhaps sufficiently to affect the forces. We REALLY need a geologists for this one.

4. Whether craters would be filled with magma depends on 3), but interstellar space is, for all we know, as void as void gets. I think the density of vacuum outside star systems is three atoms per cubic centimeter or something. I don't think we know the density of rocks, but I think it is extremely small. Also, outside of a star system, it would be extremely rare to be hit by a rogue asteroid or something (since these tend to congregate inside star systems and are very rarely ejected).

cont'd...

>>6146053 cont'd

5. Finally, my area of expertise.
Define "seeds and plants". Are we to assume a Terran-like ecosystem, with an Earth-like biochemistry? The one with carbohydrates and proteins and DNA? If so, it might be difficult for advanced life to undergo prolonged hybernation. Up to 100.000 years might be a plausible stretch (if we take some sort of a fantastic unknown evolutionary mechanism that life had to develop to survive ice ages while the planet was orbiting a star), however, anything longer than that is practically impossible. Why? Radioactive decay. An occasional radioactive is in all our bodies, but we have active repair mechanisms to deal with the damage these produce. In states of prolonged crio-stasis, even if it is possible to unfreeze with little to no consequences, the radioactive particles had millions of years to decay. So many of them probably did. And since the body is frozen, the enzymes/repair mechanisms don't work during that time. Therefore the decay probably messed up the genetic makeup/structure of important cells. This damage ACCUMULATES as time progresses, so after millions of years of interstellar travel, I doubt any complex organism - similar to OUR biochemistry, at least - could survive without significant deterioration.

>>6145798
> Question 1 -

Well yes. If it wasn't, then the earth/jupiter/etc. would fling themselves out of the solar system because the sun couldn't hold them.

>Question 2 -

That's exactly what would happen.

>Question 3 -

Depends on what the core is made of. The Earth's core would be cold and solid except it has enough radioactives in it that the decay keeps the core molten. Heat loss isn't a huge factor when you have a slow processes like decays keeping things warm. The core could easily still be molten (but smaller! and cooler than otherwise) after a million, or billion, years in deep space.

>Question 4 -

Deep space is pretty empty. But there are other rogue objects that have been thrown out of solar systems, dense gas clouds, and other star systems to encounter. Probably the planet's crust would have cooled (and contracted) enough that major tectonics aren't still ongoing, and with no gaseous atmosphere (and rain/etc.) to erode things, you're going to have pockmarks all over the place, probably similar to the southern hemisphere of Mars, which still bears lots of scars even after a billion years.

>Lastly.

Depends on the biology of the planet. There are alternate biologies that can survive that and are relatively resistant to cosmic rays. A liquid planetary core can still have a dynamo in it, creating a magnetic field to shield the planet of the worst of that sort of thing. I'd give fair odds that certain creatures could go dormant long enough to survive an interstellar voyage (bacteria, fungi, very simple and hardy creatures like Water Bears or whatever they're called). You're not going to get large or intelligent entities to survive, probably, unless the planet is built around a silicate kind of life, or something else that's potentially hardier than our protein-based Carbon life on Earth.

Ideally I want the planet to be "Suitable for Human Habitation" Above and beyond that of Mars or Venus ( IF we cleaned up it's act ) Basically making it the next goal of human civilization. Sort of... Reversing the idea of intersteller colonization. Instead of going out and finding a new planet to colonize, it found us.

So you manage to finish your project of seaworld.

and all I was seeing hate all the way

>>6146178
Completely finished? No.

Playable? Absolutely. There's a download link in this thread

>>6146176
In a highly elliptical (the most plausible one for a captured planet) orbit, the planet's not going to be so great for colonization simply because of the massive temperature swings it will experience - then again this depends on how fast the planet is moving after everything settles down. If its orbit is elliptical, but not excessively so, such as its orbit varying between Venus and Mars... then people could probably live there without too much difficulty.

It is not impossible for interactions with the various planetary objects (and the sun) to strip away enough angular momentum from the planet that it ends up in such an orbit. We're throwing a lot of handwavium around just getting a rogue planet into the solar system, a little more won't hurt.

By the way, I have preserve this for posterity. http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/6144666/
I learned too much from it to let it go to waste.

I love this thread

So, Answers.

Question 1 - It happened. Yay!

Question 2 - Atmosphere condenses into ice and liquid oxygen.

Question 3 - The gravitational pull of a smallish moon as well as the 'darksun' that pulled it out, is going to be enough to keep the core of the planet going as will the various radioactives the planet contains. Tectonically, it will be sort of cold welded into place.

Question 4 - There isn't much debris, but travelling for such a long time it eventually hits -somethings- and the dark sun would have other small asteroids and bits from Kuiper belts and Oort clouds orbiting it that would crash into the planet. Same would happen when the planet enters and passes through -our- Oort and Kuiper belts.

And lastly - There's not going to be any life, except exophiles surviving in warm caverns deep beneath the surface. Heated by the planets core. Anything above single celled bacteria is going to not really...Work. Too complex.

>>6146342
You always could go for an exotic biosphere. For example, colonial single-cell organisms that amalgamate into semi-sentient colonies. Or an advanced plant/animal like species whose gametes (equivalent of sperm and ova) are actually bacterial-like lifeforms, so they can be preserved like spores for indefinite amounts of time (spores are so small and dessicated they are practically immune to the radioactivity problem I described earlier).

That way you could have an awakening ecosystem of complex lifeforms as soon as things start heating up.

>>6146414
That'd work. but for a future post. Today all I really want to focus on is the 'is it possible' of stellar mechanics and to figure out how to position the planet. Next post will probably concern life and the ruins on the planet.